Apple Just Unveiled A Ton Of New Products (And A 24/7 Radio Station)

Long Story Short

Long Story

Following on the heels of Google's developer conference Google I/O is Apple's 2015 World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). Google made their conference a tough act to follow, debuting the amazingly intuitive Google Now feature "Now on Tap", and their latest VR offerings like Expeditions, JUMP and the Spotlight Stories app.

Apple's WWDC 2015 began with an opening segment featuring Bill Hader posing as the "director" of the conference.

The segment was a Birdman-esque behind the scenes look at Hader directing a dazzling, pyrotechnic, Broadway-style WWDC show. There were cameos from other comedic starts like Christine Yu, Community's Danny Pudi and Veep's Matt Walsh as an "Angel Investor."

Inevitably, the segment ended with Hader's version of the show crashing and burning, but, the message was that Apple has so many exciting things to announce, they don't need all the razzle dazzle.

Next, Tim Cook took the stage to deliver an intro. He mentioned an anecdote about the Cleveland Indians holding Brandon Moss's home run ball hostage in exchange for a list of Apple Products. Cook promised to deliver all the goods demanded so that Moss can continue his streak.

OS X El Capitan

Craig Federighi took the stage to introduce OS X: El Capitan (named after the mountain in Yosemite).

Some new features in El Capitan include a trick to locate your cursor on the screen by shaking the cursor to immediately maximise it. In email, you can swipe left to delete emails and swipe right to mark them unread.You can "pin sites" to stash pages away for later by dragging them off to the left of the screen. There's also a new feature to help you figure out which tab is playing music and mute it (lifesaver).

Federighi presented the new split-view display, which allows you to multi-task in OS X. El Capitan is available for developers today and will roll out for Mac users in the autumn.

MetalMetal, formerly only available for iOS, is coming to the Mac. An Epic Games representative took the stage and demoed "Fortnite," an apocalypse-themed game where you play as a child protagonist defending against monsters and zombies from the safety of a fort.

iOS 9

SiriApple was clearly prepared for the updates to Google Now announced at Google I/O. They introduced a new "proactive", context-sensitive Siri that scrapes info from your emails and behavioural patterns to do things like add events to your schedule, set reminders and suggest apps that might help you with tasks. The calendar app will now take into account things like traffic forecasts to help you streamline your tasks and errands.

Siri also has a great new call-screening feature: when faced with an unknown incoming call, Siri will scrape you emails to see if it can find the number anywhere to provide you with information on who the person might be.

Apple's update to Siri doesn't seem quite as impressive as Google Now's 'Now on Tap'. There is not as much emphasis on using context to fill in the blanks of a request (E.g.: With Now on Tap, while listening to a song, you could ask "Ok Google, what is his name" and Google Now would know you were asking about the artist's name). Apple ensured that all of the proactive intelligence data remains anonymous and is not shared with third parties.

Apple PayA big update: Apple Pay will be available in the UK starting July of this year. UK commuters will be able to pay fares on Londom transport using Apple Pay. Another big update: Apple Pay will now support rewards and loyalty cards. Passbook will now be called "Wallet" and will hold credit cards, loyalty cards and plane tickets. Early Apple Pay adopters will be happy to hear that there are now over 1 million locations that accept Apple Pay.

NotesWith iOS 9, you can create checklists and put photos directly in your Notes. You can now draw directly into the Notes app and tap "share" while surfing to add links to webpages into your Notes.

MapsApple has finally created a dedicated app within Apple Maps for public transit, appropriately called "Transit". Transit allows you to click on a station and see all the routes (bus and train) that run through it. It also takes into account all the various entrance and exits to a station to refine your travel time and gives you step-by-step directions from point A to B even within transit hubs themselves. Transit is rolling out first in a bunch of cities in the U.S. and China.

NewsFederighi called the News App: "Beautiful content from the world's greatest sources personalised for you". VP of application product management Susan Prescott took the stage to demo the app. News creates a personalised news feed based on your content preferences and continues to learn your preferences as you read content within the app. The app allows publishers to build content within the News app itself using Apple's platform, which supports "rich" typography, photo and video. Apple's news app seems somewhat similar to "Watchup," a news video streaming app that has been gaining steam in the past few years.

This new News app from Apple seems more like Apple taking on Facebook than Flipboard

According to recent Pew research, 30% of adults get their news from Facebook. So, good luck trying to wrench people away from their Facebook feeds, Apple.

Multi-tasking on iPadYou can now use things like picture-in-picture (PIP) and split-view to multitask on iPads. For example, if you're watching a video within the YouTube app and an email notification comes up, you can open the Mail app and still have the video playing within a portion of the screen.Split-view screen screen allows you to be working in two apps at once. Both features are now available on the iPad (only iPad Air 2, however).

Quicktype keyboardThe iPad keyboard will now function as a trackpad. If you put two fingers on the keyboard, you can swipe to turn it into a trackpad that controls the cursor. There are also new cut/copy/paste shortcuts on the iPad keyboard.

Developers can now create their own Apple Watch "complications" (complications are the things you can display on your watch face like weather, moon phases, sports scores etc.)

You can now use photos from your photo album or 24-hour time-lapse shots of cities as your watch face. Video playback on the watch face is now possible as well.

You can use Apple Watch to look forward in time by rotating the digital crown to see future events; weather, traffic forecasts etc. Apple's VP of technology Kevin Lynch joked that, unfortunately, the function does not yet work for stock predictions.

"Nightstand mode" turns your Apple Watch into a mini alarm clock. Laying on its side, the watch displays the time and the side button and digital crown become a snooze and off button.

A few other fun and useful features: you can now draw doodles on the watch face in colour; you can reply to emails on the watch and even use voice recognition to dictate responses; and FaceTime audio is now supported on Apple Watch.

Apple Watch now has native app support.

Apple's Health and Fitness and Home automation apps will be supported in Apple Watch and can be controlled via Siri. For example, you can use Siri to plan workouts and log results; control HomeKit to do things like dim lights in your house; and use it to lock your car and control air conditioning all from the Apple Watch.

You can use Siri to show you "glances" of third-party apps like Instagram allowing you to quickly see the latest content from the site directly on the watch face.

Apple Watch will support the new updates to Apple Pay and the new Maps feature "Transit".

Apple Music

It's official: Apple announced a new music service. This is probably the biggest news of the conference.

Apple Music is the company's response to the "fragmented mess" that is the current music industry. It's is all about giving music and the artists behind it the respect they deserve and ensuring that digital music-curation includes a human touch.

In a video introducing Apple Music, musician and Apple Creative Trent Reznor explained: "There needs to be a place where music can be treated less like digital bits, but more like the art it is, with a sense of respect and discovery...and not just the top-tier artists but the kids at home, too."

Beats1 is Apple's first 24-hour worldwide radio station. There will be three main DJs: Ebro Darden in New York, Julie Adenuga in London and ex-BB man Zane Lowe in Los Angeles (who you might remember from his incredible interviews with Kanye West in 2013).

Apple Music Connect is a feature that allows artists, from worldwide pop stars to bedroom beat-makers, to share music and picture and text posts with fans. According to an Apple press release: "Fans can comment on or like anything an artist has posted, and share it via Messages, Facebook, Twitter and email. And when you comment, the artist can respond directly to you."

Seriously, how many times have we tried to have a social network for musicians? Seriously. I'm not sure this will work.

Drake took the stage to (somewhat awkwardly) talk about Connect. He shared how the internet helped to launch his own rap career and how young and upcoming artists can use Apple Music Connect to similarly reach audiences.

Senior VP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue took the stage to explain that Apple Music starts with "My Music." A place that compiles all the music you've purchased and all the playlists you've made in one place. You can also search for and stream any music from iTunes. The "For You" section will include playlists curated specifically for you by "talented music experts from around the world" .

Human curation is at the heart of Apple Music, but you can still use Siri for fun things like asking it to play the "top ten alternative rock hits" or the "top song from May, 1982." On stage, Cue asked Siri to "play the song from Selma" and, after accidentally playing "Selene" by Imagine Dragons (oops), it played "Glory."

Similar to Tidal, Apple Music promises to offer exclusive content like "interviews, guest hosts and the best of what’s going on in the world of music," according to a press release.

Apple Music costs $9.99/month, but Apple is offering the first 3 months for free. There is also a family rate: $14.99 for up to six family members. If it's anything like Netflix, hopefully the word "family" can be applied fairly loosely.

The 21/2 hour event finished off with a performance by The Weeknd, who debuted an awesome new disco-y Michael Jackson-esque song called "I Can't Feel My Face."

As a side note, Apple CEO Tim Cook told Mashable that today's event wouldn't be "all white guys" and he made good on the promise. Apple exec Jennifer Bailey presented the updates to Apple Pay as the first woman to ever take the Apple stage; VP of application product management Susan Prescott introduced the News app; and Drake introduced Apple Music Connect as the first non-white male to ever take the Apple stage.

Earlier we all made note of non-maleness of 2 ppl on stage at #wwdc. Drake is first non-whiteness. Apple seems aware of need for diversity.

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